Polish Hyperbaric Research Polskie Towarzystwo

Transcription

Polish Hyperbaric Research Polskie Towarzystwo
Polish Hyperbaric Research
Stephen Burke
Freelance writer
North West of England.
tel.: 00447713743123
e-mail: steve_burke10@hotmail.com
NAJWIĘKSZY OKRĘT WOJENNY HITLERA ?
W artykule opisano historię być może najbardziej potężnego okrętu wojennego
budowanego przez nazistowskie Niemcy i który być może miałby wpływ na przebieg
działań wojennych na morzu gdyby jego budowa została zakończona. Prezentowany tu
materiał powstał na podstawie badań autora w archiwach niemieckich i brytyjskich oraz
książki pt. „Without wings, the story of Hitler’s aircraft carrier” wydanej przez autora
w Wielkiej Brytanii w 2007 roku.
Słowa kluczowe: Marynarka Wojenna III Rzeszy, lotniskowiec, Graf Zeppelin,
Bismarck,Gneisenau, oddział specjalny.
HITLER’S GREATEST WARSHIP?
This article looks at what was perhaps the most powerful warship ever to be
launched in Nazi Germany. Drawing on my book ‘Without wings, the Story of Hitler’s
aircraft carrier’ and other archived documentation, I use this opportunity to expand the
‘what if scenario’ put forward in my book by examining that brief period in the early
days of the war when this one ship had the potential to alter the course, and maybe
even the outcome of the war.
Keywords: Kriegsmarine, Aircraft carrier, Graf Zeppelin, Bismarck, Gneisenau,
task force.
INTRODUCTION
Most people had never heard of Nazi Germany’s largest warship until the
discovery of her wreck lying deep in the Baltic Sea in June 2006. Those people who
knew of her existence probably had no idea as to her fate, as this was shrouded in the
mystery of events that took place behind the Iron Curtain that descended over Europe
shortly after World War II.
Launched in December 1938 at the Deutsche Werke shipyard in Kiel, she had a
waterline length of 250 meters, two huge hangar decks and an upper deck that ran
without obstruction for 244 meters of her length. From this description, you might guess
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that I am talking about an aircraft carrier, the only aircraft carrier ever built in Germany
and Nazi Germany’s largest warship, the KMS (Kriegsmarine Schiff) Graf Zeppelin.
1. BEGININGS
It is difficult to believe that until just three years before Graf Zeppelin’s launch,
Germany had been forbidden from developing aircraft carrier technology; a result of the
military restrictions imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles in the aftermath of
the Great War of 1914 – 18. However by the mid 1930’s, following Hitler’s repudiation
of the ‘Versailles Diktat’, a new arms agreement was presenting Germany with much
greater military freedom.
The Anglo–German Naval Agreement of 1935 would sanction the introduction
of aircraft carriers into Hitler’s Navy, Graf Zeppelin’s subsequent rapid pace of
construction owing much to the forethought of Germany’s marine engineers; they had
established the desired size, speed and number of aircraft to be carried by such a
vessel in a study completed two years earlier, greatly accelerating the design process.
However, being aware that they had no real knowledge of constructing such a
vessel, before beginning work on their own carrier, Graf Zeppelin’s designers
endeavoured to learn from other more experienced aircraft carrier operating navies
such as Great Britain’s Royal Navy and Japan’s Imperial Navy, both of whom they
visited.
Germany’s engineers would learn little from the Royal Navy (perhaps because
they had visited two very early examples of aircraft carriers, perhaps due to a lack of
willingness to share information with an old foe), but their visit to the Japanese carrier
Akagi would be much more successful. Here, Germany’s soon to be allies would offer
plans for essential carrier equipment such as the arrestor wire brake systems essential
for stopping an aircraft returning at speeds of in-excess of 140 Kmh in just 30 meters.
The Japanese would also offer their guests the opportunity to stay and study how they
operated such a vessel, but this offer was refused - perhaps out of a desire to return to
Germany and begin work, driven by the urgency with which the Kriegsmarine intended
to expand.
Graf Zeppelin’s keel was laid in December of 1936 and less than two years later
she was floating in the Kiel Basin. However, she would still need more than a year
before the construction of her superstructure was completed and all her machinery had
been installed.
Fig. 1. Graf Zeppelin alongside the fitting out pier in Kiel in early 1940,She is approximately 85
per cent complete.
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Once operational, she would be able to boast at having more horsepower than
any other vessel in the German fleet, with her four steam turbines being capable of
providing a total output of 200,000h.p. giving her the ability to go from a standing start
to 20 knots in just two minutes, and an estimated cruising speed of 32 knots.
When the war began in 1939 Graf Zeppelin was no more than a year away from
being put into commission. Had she been completed in time for these early days of the
war, potentially her contribution to Germany’s war effort could have been staggering.
For contrary to popular belief, it was not the twin battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz that
Great Britain’s Royal Navy (and her allies) feared the most, but Germany’s aircraft
carrier. The Royal Navy was greatly concerned about the vast area that the ship and
her aircraft could reconnoitre, an ability that made the location and destruction of some
of the vital convoys of merchant ships heading towards the British Isles inevitable. This
situation was made worse by the fact that the Royal Navy in these earlier days of the
war consisted of elderly warships, and a Fleet Air Arm that operated obsolete aircraft,
all of which were outclassed by those intended to be operated by the Nazi carrier - the
famous Bf109 fighter, Ju87 Stuka dive bombers and the purpose built Fi167 torpedo
bomber.
2. A MISSED OPPORTUNITY
Luckily for the Royal Navy and her allies, the value of the Graf Zeppelin was not
recognised by the Kriegsmarine and construction only continued on the carrier for the
next few months, work coming to a halt in April 1940 when she was approximately 85
per cent complete; with the advance of the German army throughout Europe seemingly
unstoppable the decision had been taken to stop work on the aircraft carrier. For the
time being at least, Graf Zeppelin was not seen as vital enough to the war effort, and
besides, some of her equipment had been traded with Russia in order to secure the
Eastern Front prior to the invasion of Poland, a trade that had caused a twelve month
delay in the completion of the carrier.
Grand Admiral Erich Raeder (head of the Kriegsmarine) himself had suggested
work on the carrier be suspended. This suspension would free up the materials and
manpower needed for work being carried out on the submarines the navy needed and
the politically favourable battleships (Bismarck and Tirpitz). On Raeder’s orders the
carrier was stripped of her weaponry and taken under tow to Gdynia in Poland.
Graf Zeppelin’s move from Kiel was viewed as necessary because of the
increasing ferocity of the war. There were concerns in Germany that the carrier would
be susceptible to aerial attack; concerns that were well founded, as Great Britain’s
Royal Air Force (R.A.F.) was indeed planning to attack the carrier, though at this time
for strategic reasons the attack could not be carried out.
One of the repercussions of Graf Zeppelin’s lack of operational status was that
when the battleship Bismarck departed on her one and only mission, she did so without
the benefit of any significant aerial support; a situation that directly contributed to her
demise.
It seems unlikely now that Bismarck would have been lost on her maiden
voyage had Graf Zeppelin departed with the battleship (as had been the
Kriegsmarine’s original intention) on that first foray out into the Atlantic Ocean. With the
addition of the carrier and her aircraft, history books may well have recorded an
alternative outcome. Bismarck’s story is well known; she had departed on her maiden
voyage with one escort, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. It was shortly after these ships
broke out into the Atlantic Ocean on a commerce raiding mission that they encountered
the British battle cruiser HMS Hood and the newly commissioned battleship Prince of
Wales (PoW). On sighting each other, both groups of ships opened fire at extreme
range, the German fire being particularly accurate. Shortly after action had
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commenced, a shell from Bismarck pierced one of Hood’s magazines, the ship
exploded and quickly sunk taking 1400 British sailors to their deaths. Immediately after
the loss of HMS Hood, Prince of Wales was forced to disengage owing to the
malfunctioning of all but one of her main armament - the newest battleship in the Royal
Navy, complete with the civilian technicians who were still onboard due to the hasty
commissioning of the ship, retreating away from the battle. Bismarck, taking advantage
of the Prince of Wales’ misfortune, used this opportunity to disappear into the grey
wastes of the Atlantic initiating one of the most famous pursuits in history, a pursuit that
stretched across the Atlantic until Bismarck was cornered and sunk by overwhelming
British fire power.
These six days in May 1941 had had the potential to become a defining
moment in World War II. The presence of the Nazi carrier would certainly have altered
some of the events that we today consider historical fact, her name inevitably being as
well known (if not more so) as that of the Bismarck.
With Graf Zeppelin sailing in company with Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, it would
seem most likely that in the early hours of the 24th May 1941, shortly after clearing the
Denmark Straits, having been spotted by the British cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk late
the previous evening and subsequently stalked at a distance by the use of Suffolk’s
newly installed radar set, the Graf Zeppelin would deploy the first ever German carrier
borne air strike, targeting the two British ships - the proximity of which was known to
Admiral Lütjens (Norfolk having exposed herself to the Bismarck late on the 23rd and
Suffolk’s radar transmissions being very detectable to the Bismarck’s radar search
receiver), the task force commander, stationed onboard his flag ship, Bismarck.
Though the weather conditions on the 23/24 May had been poor, by the early
hours (4.30am) of the 24th they had improved enough to allow the approaching Prince
of Wales to consider launching her seaplane (however contaminated aviation fuel
prevented this), visibility being approximately twelve miles. These improving conditions
would of course have been good enough for the Germans to begin their carrier
operations also (if indeed they had not already done so).
Fig. 2. A Bf109T returns to the carrier’s deck. Image courtesy of Joseph Burke
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Crucially to the historical events as we know them today, an attack at this time
on the Norfolk and Suffolk by German carrier aircraft would have allowed the Bismarck
task force to shake-off or destroy its pursuers.
For Admiral Lütjens, knowing that he had been stalked for several hours by
British cruisers that were obviously acting as homing beacons for a more powerful fleet,
it is also fair to assume that he would have taken this opportunity to order not just an air
strike but to fly off some reconnaissance aircraft as well (probably one or more of the
Fieselers). With these spotter aircraft aloft, we can be certain that the Hood and Prince
of Wales would have been spotted in ample time to have allowed Lütjens to fully
consider his next move. Lütjens would in no way have been compelled to join action
with them as actually happened in May 1941 - we know that Prince of Wales, though
equipped with modern radar, did not have it switched on and thus sailed blind towards
its foe, dependent on the radio messages coming from Norfolk and Suffolk to act as its
guide (this was as a result of an order from Admiral Holland on board Hood who had
declared that in order not to disclose the groups approach to the German ships Prince
of Wales’ radar should only be switched On when action became imminent so as to
utilise its capability as a range finder for her main armament).
At this point in our fictitious history of World War II, one of two events could
happen, both detrimental to Great Britain’s struggle, the repercussions far reaching.
The first scenario sees Admiral Lütjens, forewarned of the approaching British ships by
his spotter aircraft, deciding to avoid a confrontation. Lütjens would have had ample
time and opportunity to alter course and use his superior speed to escape. In this
scenario, both the British battle cruiser Hood and Germany’s battleship Bismarck live to
fight another day. For Bismarck, roaming free in the Atlantic, there would have been
ample opportunity to cause havoc. With Graf Zeppelin’s aircraft surveying the vastness
of the Atlantic Ocean, providing protection from foes and searching for suitable targets,
the collateral damage to Britain’s convoys would have been extreme, more so than that
caused by the preceding missions by Germany’s pocket battleships and battle cruisers.
The Bismarck task force would have had a huge benefit over the ships being
operated by Great Britain. All modern, each of these ships was capable of outrunning
every one of their contemporary British rivals; The only British battleships capable of
coming close to matching Bismarck in speed, armour and firepower being the new King
George the fifth (KGV) class of which only two had been completed (KGV and Prince of
Wales). As for aircraft carriers, though Germany was at a distinct numerical
disadvantage, Britain’s carriers were distributed throughout the various theatres of
conflict around the world and besides, several of these were elderly slow vessels, not
suited for keeping up with a battle group travelling at speed.
There was of course also the matter of British carrier aircraft; had the aircraft
flown from the two modern British carriers that were actually present in the hunt for the
Bismarck been unfortunate enough to locate their targets, they would stand little
chance of making it back to their ships, for had the slow Fairy Swordfish of the Royal
Navy’s Fleet Air Arm survived the ravages of the combined anti-aircraft fire of the
Bismarck task force, the odds of them surviving the long flight back to their carrier
whilst being pursued by a flight of Bf 109s would have been almost nil.
The second scenario in our alternative history would witness Admiral Lütjens
emerging from the Denmark Straits and opting to turn towards the British ships in order
to make battle. During the action that follows, Hood is of course still lost, however the
malfunctioning Prince of Wales is unable to disengage at will when her main armament
malfunctions. With Admiral Lütjens receiving crucial information as to what lies over the
horizon via Graf Zeppelin’s reconnaissance aircraft - other than the two cruisers and 4
destroyers (which are at best an hours sailing away) that Admiral Holland had
detached some hours earlier in order to hunt for the Bismarck, there are no British
warships within many hours sailing - history may well have recorded that he turned his
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small party of ships for the final kill, savaging Britain’s newest battleship with
devastating fire from Bismarck’s 380mm (15-inch) main armament whilst carrier aircraft
covered his flank to ensure that none of the trailing British warships could come close
enough to meddle. It is even conceivable, that at this point in the battle some of Graf
Zeppelin’s torpedo and dive bomber aircraft may have become involved in the mêlée,
Prince of Wales inevitably sustaining further damage, if not complete destruction from
the air - fulfilling her destiny to become the first battleship lost to an aerial assault on
the open sea, a full six months before this actually happened at the hands of Japanese
aircraft in the South China Sea.
The loss of the Prince of Wales at this time may have contributed more than we
can possibly imagine for the Nazi war effort; Great Britain, standing alone in the
struggle, her army minus much of its equipment having been evicted from first Norway
and then Continental Europe 12 months before, followed by the great losses in
personnel that went with the evacuation of Greece in the weeks before Bismarck had
broken out into the Atlantic, coupled with the subsequent collapse on the strategic
Mediterranean island of Crete just days after this most devastating of naval battles, but
thus far her Empire still intact, may well have sued for peace. Indeed by February 1941
many in Germany believed Britain was ready to capitulate.
If the great series of defeats on land coupled with the naval disaster of May
1941 was not enough to tip British public opinion towards capitulation, the following six
months may have done just that. Before the year was done, another modern British
warship, the famous aircraft carrier Ark Royal was torpedoed and sunk in the
Mediterranean by U-81 on November 13 and just twelve days later the battleship HMS
Barham was lost with significant loss of life – to make no mention of the other warships
of varying types and sizes that suffered damage and loss. Furthermore, without Prince
of Wales, as 1941 drew to a close and the possibility of war with Japan loomed large
on the horizon, the only effective capital ship of the Home fleet would have been King
George the Fifth (the third ship in this class HMS Duke of York, would only just be
embarking on her shakedown cruise in December of 1941). With the Bismarck still in
existence and Tirpitz now complete, the Royal Navy would have been severely limited
as to what ships they could have sent by way of a deterrent to Far Eastern waters; In
reality, back in 1941 the Admiralty had of course sent the Prince of Wales and Repulse,
but had Prince of Wales been lost the previous May this would of course not have been
an option. In this situation the Royal Navy may have been compelled to send the four
elderly ‘R’ class battleship as had been their original idea (it was Winston Churchill
himself who had sidelined this plan, insisting the Admiralty despatch the Prince of
Wales and Repulse to this theatre), heralding Great Britain’s second, crushing naval
defeat in just six months, and perhaps her exit from the war.
Of course the narrative above is thankfully a fictitious one, Graf Zeppelin was
not present with Bismarck on that first fateful mission, and Bismarck was lost, British
carrier aircraft playing an important role in her destruction.
Though Bismarck’s loss had so graphically demonstrated Germany’s need to
possess an operational aircraft carrier, a shortage of steel coupled with the urgency to
produce vast numbers of U-boats would prevent the necessary work from being carried
out on Graf Zeppelin. It would take the near loss of Bismarck’s sister ship Tirpitz to
torpedoes dropped by British carrier aircraft early the following year before they would
fully realise the necessity of having an operational aircraft carrier of their own. But even
then it would still be the end of the year (1942) before the necessary dockyard space,
manpower and materials could be found to complete the job.
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3. THE END OF A GIGANT
Work had barely restarted on the Graf Zeppelin when a bitter argument
between Grand Admiral Raeder and Hitler over the future deployment of the fleet once
again brought her construction to a halt. Hitler had been complaining for a long time
about the lack of successes achieved by the Kriegsmarine, and was now adamant that
all the big ships should be withdrawn from service and scrapped - a demand that
compelled Raeder to resign immediately. In his place Karl Dönitz (head of U-boat
command) was appointed by Hitler to fill the role of Grand Admiral - signifying Hitler’s
desire that the Kriegsmarine should move away from operating the big ships.
Dönitz quickly realised Hitler’s error in withdrawing these ships, and in a
meeting with the Führer managed to convince him of the worth of keeping at least
some of them in service. Graf Zeppelin was amongst those retained, but she was to
withdraw at once to Poland as Dönitz had no immediate use for the ship, a decision
that was influenced by the Kriegsmarine’s chronic shortage of heavy fuel oil and
manpower. Also a factor in her re-location was the fear that her presence at Kiel would
have attracted still more attacks by the heavy bombers of the R.A.F.
Graf Zeppelin arrived on the river Öder in April 1943.
As Germany’s military situation worsened over the coming years, the
opportunity to use this ship never materialised and the rest of the war would largely
pass Hitler’s aircraft carrier by as she sat at her mooring on the river.
She would still be moored on the Öder in early 1945 when, with the advancing
Russian army in sight, German troops once again boarded her. With the Soviet
advance now clearly unstoppable and the capture of such a prize being completely
unacceptable to the Kriegsmarine, the men who boarded her that day went not to
defend her, but rather to destroy her. They rigged a series of explosive devices
throughout the ship, and when the command was given detonated them by remote
control, the ship settling into the shallow riverbed.
Just days after these events the war was over, and it would not be long before
Soviet engineers set about trying to raise her, a feat they achieved by September 1945.
Unfortunately for the Graf Zeppelin, by 1945, she was of an obsolete design –
and had suffered significant damage during her scuttling.
No longer the cutting edge technology that had been launched back in 1938,
Graf Zeppelin’s chance of glory had passed. She had had the potential for a brief
period in the early years of the war to give the Kriegsmarine the lead in technology and
firepower over the Royal Navy - a task force made up of Graf Zeppelin, Bismarck and
Gneisenau, escorted by two heavy cruisers and a dozen destroyers being a
phenomenally powerful force that could not fail to have altered at least some of the now
historical facts of World War II.
Unfortunately for the Graf Zeppelin, the reality is that she played no significant
part in Europe’s history, her allure being in her unfulfilled potential and the numerous
‘what if’ scenarios endlessly discussed by ‘Graf Zeppelin fanatics’ such as myself.
CONCLUSIONS
Today, more than sixty years after those final dramatic days of the war, Graf
Zeppelin would be completely forgotten had she been broken for scrap where she lay
on the river Öder just outside the city of Stettin on Poland’s Baltic coast. This after all
was to be the fate of the other ships of the Kriegsmarine that had similarly ended in the
shallows. However, for some reason Soviet officials took the decision to dispose of the
re-floated Graf Zeppelin as a weapons target. Sceptics would say this decision came
out of a desire to be ready for a potential conflict with Russia’s recent allies - namely
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Great Britain and America - who had operated many such vessels during the war,
vessels which Russia had no experience in either operating or sinking.
In August 1947 Graf Zeppelin was towed out into the Baltic Sea, a sea from
which she had never left. Here she would endure a series of attacks by Soviet air and
naval forces before worsening weather conditions forced the premature abandonment
of the weapons test, the ship being sunk immediately by torpedoes.
There is a degree of controversy as to exactly what vessel fired the final
torpedoes at the ship, but whatever this vessel was, to it went the honour of sinking the
last aircraft carrier of the twentieth century to be sunk by conventional weapons.
The Graf Zeppelin was located in 2006 lying in 88 metres of water. She rests
with a heavy list over towards her starboard side (approximately 45°), superstructure
down. Side scan images of her show that she is very intact, her port side towering
more than 20m above the seabed, demonstrating the sheer size of this vessel – she is
in excess of 30m wide. Her superstructure and bow are damaged, her bow significantly
and a large hole has opened up in her flight deck just aft of her mid-ships elevator - one
would presume as the result of the Soviet weapons test.
Fig. 3. Graf Zeppelin today .Image courtesy of the Hydrographical Support Squadron of the
Polish Navy
The Polish naval team that located the wreckage of the Graf Zeppelin (the
Department of diving gear & underwater work technology), have recently completed a
survey of the wreck in conjunction with their Hydrographical Support Squadron and it is
their sonar image that we see shown here. Sadly, for the time being at least, there is no
possibility of any further diving expeditions to the wreck site. Even for the Polish navy
access was a complicated matter. As she fell into Soviet hands at the end of World
War II, Graf Zeppelin is technically a Soviet warship and this is the first obstacle that
any hopeful visitor must overcome; the Russian Federation does not wish to have
visitors to the wreck site, and it took much communication between Poland and
Russia’s Foreign Office before even the Polish navy could visit her. Secondly Graf
Zeppelin lies very close to a Polish oilfield and the authorities there are not keen to
have any unnecessary operations going on in the area.
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Hopefully, one day at least, the wreck will become accessible to sports divers –
let’s remember that she is one of only two realistically dive-able World War II aircraft
carriers in the world and the last to be sunk by conventional weapons – and Graf
Zeppelin will become as well visited as wrecks such as the USS Saratoga, the only
other dive-able World War II aircraft carrier, a ship that was similarly disposed of in
preparation for the Cold War.
LITERATURE
1. Ballard R.; The Discovery of The Bismarck, Madison Publishing, ISBN 0-34052976-8, 1990.
2. Burke S.; “Without wings, the Story of Hitler’s aircraft carrier”. Trafford
Publishing, ISBN 978-1-4251-2216-7, 2007.
3. Green, William. “Warplanes of the third reich”, Purnell Book Services Ltd, 1970
4. (Forward by) Showell, Jak P. Mallman, “Fuhrer conferences on naval affairs
1939-1945”. Greenhill Books, 1980.
5. Marshall, Francis L. “Sea Eagles”, Air Research Publications, 1993
6. Porten, Edward P. Von der. “German navy in world war two”, Pan Books, 1972
7. Roskill S.W.; The war at sea 1939 1945. Vol.1., Her Majesty’s Stationary Office,
London, 1954.
8. Ruge, Friedrich “Der seekrieg, the german navy’s story 1939–1945”, U.S. Naval
Institute, 1957
9. Ruge, Friedrich “The soviets as naval opponents”, Patrick Stephens Ltd, 1979
10. Trevor-Roper (editor), H.R. “Hitlers war directives 1939–1945”, Sidgwick and
Jackson, 1964
11. Documents from the personal collection of Großadmiral Raeder (PG31320 &
PG 31763) courtesy of the Naval Historical Branch (London)
12. British Intelligence Objectives Sub-committee (BIOS) – final report No. s 28,
382, 509 & 1333 (Imperial War Museum collection, Duxford)
13. Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee – Item No 29 (FILE No.
XXXIII-68) (Imperial War Museum collection, Duxford)
14. Archive document: ADM 1/19137, National Archive, Kew Gardens, London.
Author:
Stephen Burke – is an engineer with General Motors (UK), living and working in the North West
of England. An amateur historian and avid deep wreck diver, Steve’s first book ‘Without wings,
the story of Hitler’s aircraft carrier’ was published in 2007.
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POLISH @ HYPERBARIC @ RESEARCH
W INTERNECINE
PHR od dawna prowadzi stronę internetową czasopisma http://www.phr.net.pl, od
dłuższego czasu pismo znajduje się również w zasobach internetowej bazy danych
o zawartości krajowych czasopism naukowo – badawczych BazTech (http://baztech.icm.edu.pl).
Na te dwie internetowe bazy danych redakcja ma bezpośredni wpływ, jedną prowadzi sama,
z drugą współpracuje. Obecność w BazTech automatycznie przekłada się na zaistnienie pisma
w Bibliotece Wirtualnej Nauki (http://lodowy.icm.edu.pl). Tu również znajdują się rekordy
naszych artykułów, przy czym baza ta działa na nieco innej zasadzie niż BazTech. Przede
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Informacja o PHR znajduje się również na stronie Wikipedii (http://pl.wikipedia.org)
w kategorii Czasopisma Naukowe. Natomiast wybrane zasoby pisma są dostępne w systemie
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